Halloween Horrors
by Partymember
Summary: Old friends return for some suspensful Halloween fun!


DISCLAIMER: I don't own Foster's or Arnold Palmer or anyone or anything.

CHAPTER 1

Joey Ramone screamed "Hey, Ho… Let's Go!" in a fake British accent through the old Walkman headphones. Frankie Foster air-guitared her way from the counter to the pantry and filled a massive bowl with assorted candy. Instead of the normal violet skirt, she was wearing jeans too ripped, tight, and faded to be seen in polite company. A ragged and sleeveless black tee shirt replaced her normal white one. She was Punk Rock for Halloween. A little extra eye liner and some scruffed up hair completed the outfit. In about an hour the first Trick or Treaters would be scampering up to the mansion looking for sugar in their various funny, cute, and sometimes trashy outfits.

Frankie loved Halloween.

Mac walked into the kitchen, wearing a Rocket Wars Cadet outfit, he smiled, "Great costume Frankie! You need any help with this stuff?"

Frankie turned off her iPod, "Nah, I'm alright, Thanks for asking, though. Hey, is everyone behaving out there?" The Imaginary Friends were going out tonight, under the watchful eye of Madame Foster. Although this was a complete and utter recipe for disaster, Frankie decided not to worry. She had also eaten one of the brownies her friend Cathy had made for the Phish concert, which put her mind at ease.

Mac peeked out of the kitchen door into the lobby. The Imaginary Friends were by and large simply standing around and chatting. Bloo was still putting his costume together, which worried Mac, but a room without Bloo was a peaceful and orderly room, so he couldn't complain. "Yeah, everyone looks pretty excited."

"Well that's good; we haven't done this since Wally ruined Halloween back in '01. Hopefully things will go smoother this time around." She paused and gave him a pleading look, "Just make sure Bloo doesn't ruin things, okay? I don't want to wait another six years to do this again, 'kay?"

Mac smiled and nodded, "No problem, Frankie. I'm bribing him with tickets to the new Rocket Wars movie. If he acts up, no ticket…" he smiled wider, "so I think he'll be good. Hey!" he was struck by inspiration, "if he starts trouble do you want to go?"

Frankie abhorred Rocket Wars. Every time she went to a flick even remotely related to the Science Fiction genre she was hounded by geeks with cheese-doodle breath and a bedroom in their mother's basement. But, since she was in a decidedly good mood tonight, she smiled at Mac and said, "Of course, Mac, I'd love to."

Mac blushed a little, "Great! I, uh, where the heck is Bloo?" he walked out of the kitchen to find his friend and to cool down.

Frankie left the massive Bowl o' Candy on the butcher block and went to get herself an Arnold Palmer out of the fridge. She leaned against the fridge and popped the top on the half Iced Tea/half Lemonade. Arnold Palmers kicked ass. She happened to glance up at the candy bowl, as she was pretty damn hungry, and she saw Bloo. The little bastard was wearing makeup, and lots of it, as well as a dress and purse. She recognized the purse and the shade of lipstick. "You little fucker…" she started.

Bloo's jaw dropped. He even dropped the half-eaten Twix bars. "Frankie?"

She had said a bad word. "Oh…shit…" she did it again, "damn…"

Bloo's look of awe turned into a Grinch-like smile, "Fraaaaankie," he crooned, "how's about this: you don't get me in trouble for wearing all of your makeup and your purse. And your dress," he picked at it, "Don't worry, it's just the bottom half."

Christ. That had been a $200 dress.

"Anyway," he continued, "You let this slide and I won't have to tell Herrmann what you just said? I mean, remember when Duchess said that? She had to scrub the grout on all the tile in the whole house with a can of Comet and a toothbrush!" he laughed, "And seeing as how that's your job anyway, I can't even imagine what you'd have to do…" he trailed off for dramatic effect. "So let's just call it even, eh?"

Frankie felt herself getting angry, even with the jovial littleTetrahydrocannabinol molecules swimming around in her system, she could feel her blood pressure rising. But the trade off was fair, "Alright Bloo," she said through gritted teeth, "But remember, if you fuck up anything tonight your Rocket Wars ticket is MINE."

He smiled and finished his Twix bar, "No problem, Frankie. You can trust me." With that he hopped off the butcher block and ran into the foyer to join the other eager Trick or Treaters.

She sighed, then finished her Arnold Palmer. At least the house would be empty tonight. Harriman was taking the younger or less trustworthy Imaginary Friends, the older ones would be walking around in groups, Mac had the awesome responsibility of Bloo (even though he couldn't go out for candy, Mac still volunteered to baby-sit the spastic little fuck), and Madame Foster would be leading the rest of the Imaginary Friends.

Frankie Foster would be watching horror movies, eating pizza, and drinking some Miller Chill she smuggled in without Harriman's knowledge. A night to herself, a night where she was neither working nor going out, but simply relaxing at home…

CHAPTER 2

"Frankie! Let us in!"

"Frankie!"

The girl yawned and looked at the clock. 8:30. Nobody was supposed to be home until 11, after the party at the Civic Center. Damn. Had she fallen asleep? Must've…Mike Myers was at the bottom of a well getting dynamite thrown on him; last she remembered he had been ripping the face off of a pickup driver.

"FRANKIE!"

She got up from the couch and walked out to the foyer. When she opened the door she saw Bloo covered in chewing gum and Mac scowling like he had just missed Christmas. "Why are you guys home so early?"

"I don't want to talk about it" Mac said flatly, "Bloo, get upstairs and take a bath."

"But Maaaaaac…"

"Now, Bloo." He turned to Frankie and smiled, "looks like you got a ticket to Rocket Wars."

"Great!" she tried to make it sound convincing. She looked out onto the dark street and saw it was mostly empty, the younger kids had gone home and the older kids were playing beer bong in garages. One figure stood just outside of the pale yellow light thrown by the streetlight just across the road. He just…stood there. Waiting for a ride, maybe…She closed and locked the door.

"So what are you doing?" Mac asked, walking into the living room.

"Um," she tried to head him off to grab the empty beer bottles, "just watching a little television. Halloween 4. Or 5. Pizza?" she offered him the half of the pie that remained.

"Sure." He sat down on the couch and grabbed a greasy slice, "thanks."

Frankie put her feet up on the coffee table and watched the edited-for-television beginning of the next flick: Mike Myers in a river, ending up in a fisherman's shack, when a loud crash came from the kitchen. Frankie looked at Mac. She muttered, "Bloo…" under her breath. The two walked into the kitchen, and saw the window was shattered. Glass shards littered the linoleum, and a few dead leaves had fluttered inside in the strong winds.

"I am going to kill him." Frankie declared. The brownie had worn off and she was no longer mellow.

"Well…hang on. I think Bloo's upstairs, and he usually sticks around because it hasn't occurred to him he's done something wrong." Mac seemed genuinely worried.

Frankie paused for a second, "you're right. He should go check on him."

They went upstairs and saw the lights on in the bathroom and water seeping from under the door. Bloo was singing loudly and out of key about superheroes and splashing around. Frankie pounded on the door. "Who is it?" Bloo asked in a sing-song voice.

"Open this door RIGHT now, mister!" She demanded.

Bloo opened the door, steam billowing out in a huge warm cloud. The bathroom was a giant puddle, with army men and rubber ducks and a few of Eduardo's Beady Babies strewn all over the place. Bloo had washed off the makeup and bubblegum, but had one of Frankie's personal peach-colored towels wrapped around his waist. Leaning against the door jamb with one finger digging for earwax, he asked coolly, "Can I help you?"

"Did you break a window downstairs?" Mac asked.

"No way, I've been in here the whole time. You do mean recently, right?"

"Yeah, in the last five minutes." Frankie was getting angry.

"Nope. Wasn't me, then."

"Then who..?" Before Mac could finish his sentence the whole house groaned and all the lights died. Power outage.

"Oh great…" Frankie's night to herself was going downhill fast.

"Don't worry, I've got a flashlight." Mac pulled out a tiny Maglight from his pocket and twisted it into focus.

"I guess I better go check the fuse box." Frankie said. "Come on, Mac, I'll need to use your flashlight." The two began to walk down the stairs when Bloo cried out in a nervous voice.

"Wait! You can't leave me here by myself!"

Frankie sighed, "Alright, Bloo, come on."

Halfway down the stairs they heard a thud. Then a crash as if a ceramic plate had been broken. Someone was in the house. "Frankie, did you lock the door?" Mac asked slowly.

"Yeah. I did." She was seriously worried now. "Guys, um…" an intruder? That was both frightening and surreal. "Lets get to a phone." Her cell was on the charger in the kitchen. They needed a landline. The nearest telephone was in Madame Foster's room, a floor below them and all the way across the house.

CHAPTER 3

They had made it to the lower floor. Frankie carried a mop whose head she had unscrewed, basically a yellow fiberglass stick, and Bloo carried his defective paddleball. Mac lit the way with his bright little Maglight. They crept along the plush carpet of the long, tall hallways. The damn house was like a labyrinth, really. At night with no electricity and the knowledge of an intruder in the place… Frankie's heart was in her throat. They made their way slowly and silently, until the open door to Madame Foster's room was only twenty feet away. The moonlight shining through the window of Madame's Master Bedroom cast stretched and eerie shadows on the floors. One of the old oak boards creaked under their feet. The group stopped dead in their tracks, hoping to God that nobody had heard them. Another creak, this one closer than before.

Holy shit, he was right there! From a hallway to the left and maybe five feet in front of them, a tall figure wearing a trench coat appeared. He walked casually, turned to face them slowly, and extended his left hand slightly.

The sharp click of a steel blade swinging up and locking into place sounded like a gunshot in the oppressing silence of the house. The stranger had a hefty old Buck 110 Model folder that somebody had converted into an illegal automatic. Simply depress the little button and the lethal clip-point blade, under spring tension, snapped out in the blink of an eye.

Frankie's eyes were wide with abject terror, her heart was pounding like a jackhammer, her brain had locked up and stalled…however, Frankie Foster was a caregiver and a protector. Her motherly instinct dropped into gear and she grabbed Mac and Bloo by the back of their necks, wheeled around, and bolted down the hallway. She heard nothing but the sound of her own heart thumping, not Mac's muttered curses, not Bloo's high-pitched shriek: just her heart pumping.

She had sprinted three floors and found herself at her own door, Mac and Bloo still firmly gripped in her hands and trying to get free. Her hearing returned and her pulse rate dropped. Adrenaline had cut itself off to let her asses the situation. "Okay guys, we need to think of a plan, but first we need to get safe." She opened her door and ushered the two inside, locking it behind her. Using Mac's flashlight she got a lighter and a couple candles from her dresser and brought them and the two kids into her bathroom. She locked the door and stuffed a towel under it to block any of the flickering candlelight.

The three of them sat on the cold, tiled floor. Mac was shivering out of fear more so than from the temperature, Frankie was dead quiet, and Bloo was borderline freaking out. He couldn't shut up. Every time Frankie or Mac tried to tell him to quiet down he adopted an even shriller tone and uttered something to the effect of: "You expect me to keep it down when there's an axe murderer outside our door?!?"

Eventually Frankie went into her medicine cabinet and took out a little orange bottle. She made Bloo take a handful of the pills with a half-empty Arnold Palmer which had been sitting on her sink. He shut up fairly quickly.

CHAPTER 4

Bloo was lying in the bone-dry bathtub, drooling on himself. Frankie and Mac sat on the rim of the tub, talking in low voices about whatever crossed their minds. Neither she nor Mac had devised a good plan yet.

"So what'd you give him?" Mac asked, looking back at the sedated Bloo.

Frankie picked the prescription bottle off the sink and handed it to him, "Diazepam, a.k.a. Valium. Muscle relaxant. I think I gave him too much but…well…I don't care. He'll snap out of it…sometime." Bloo was gurgling and had a dull smile on his face.

"Do you think we'll be alright?" Mac asked in a very vulnerable and frightened voice.

Frankie sighed and put her arm around his shoulder, "Yeah, don't worry about it, kiddo." She had absolutely zero confidence in their survival, but she didn't want to have to dope up Mac, too.

"I always wanted to know how I would die." Mac's morbid utterance startled Frankie.

"I guess I always thought I would, you know, grow up." He was just staring at the locked bathroom door now, reflecting on the unfulfilled life he was leading.

"Mac…" she had a genuinely empathetic tone in her voice.

He looked at her, "It doesn't really matter, you know. Ever read 'The Stranger'?"

She was taken aback. 'The Stranger' was a work by an Algerian-French author, Albert Camus. Not a very long book, but one whose subject was entirely unbecoming of an 8 year old: Existentialism, which recognized the absurdity and futility of human life. She had read it in High school, back when she painted her nails black and listened to The Cure and Joy Division.

"…Yes, I have…why?"

He sat quiet for a minute. "If we die…tonight…who cares? Yeah, the Imaginary Friends and Madame Foster, my family and a few of my friends, but…what about the next door neighbors? Will they lose any sleep over it? No. I mean, everybody dies, right? And the Earth keeps spinning off into the unknown at however many thousands of miles per hour…why worry about something as stupid as death? The people who have put me as a major fixture in their lives will care, until someone else comes along to take my place, but outside of those who have actually invested time in me…who cares if I die at eight or eighty?" he was smiling now, a grin curled at the ends on his lips as he described the pointless autonomy with which people lived their lives these days. "And I never even got laid." He ended.

Frankie laughed, "And I never got to see Spain." She was only half joking, "But you're mostly right, I hate to say. Life is only as meaningful as you make it. That idea is only depressing if you choose not to grab a hold of life and ride it into the ground. Most people, myself included, realize that at some point but bury it so that we can go on with our pointless little lives." She drank the last few drops of the Arnold Palmer. "And now I'm going to die." She said is as a statement of fact, without emotion or fear or self-pity.

Then tears started running down her cheeks, "Well fuck that, if you'll pardon my French. I'm not going to let you, me, and Bloo die because of some goon whacked out on PCP with a pocket knife!" she stood up. "I'll be back. Lock the door behind me."

"Where are you going?" Mac asked her.

"To get to a phone, or to kill this guy. Whichever opportunity presents itself first." She had no intention of getting to a phone.

CHAPTER 5

Frankie Foster stalked down the shadowy and silent halls for a second time hat night, no longer as a hunted animal, but as a predator now. Her pupils were dilated to capture every speck of moonlight, her ears strained against the overwhelming silence to hear the faintest pin drop. She had removed her shoes to even walk with more stealth. She made her way to Mister Harriman's office. Moving seemed quicker when you weren't afraid that every step would be your last.

Opening the large doors to Harriman's office as quietly as possible, she slipped inside and quickly got to his closet. Rummaging around the collected antiques and mementos, she found what she was looking for: lifting it slowly and with awe, like Indiana Jones recovering an ancient artifact, she held in her hands a 130 year-old British double-barreled shotgun. She looked to the top shelf and found a 5-round box of birdshot. Frankie stood in the middle of the moonlit room, her shadow stretching all the way to the big double doors. She swung the twin barrels down and dropped a pair of red plastic shells into the breeches of the 30-inch steel tubes. She swung the barrels up and they snapped home with a satisfying "click".

Frankie Foster, her eyes filled with steely determination, then picked up an antique lamp and walked out of Harriman's office. She stood at the top of the steps and threw the heavy metal lamp down the stairs. It bounced its way off every oak board, finally skidding to a halt on the wide tiles of the foyer. She slunk back into the shadows and waited.

Sure enough, not a minute later, the trench coat-wearing intruder came running down the stairs with his Buck Knife in hand. He stopped to catch his breath and Frankie emerged from the dense darkness of the looming shadows.

"Holy shit, Frannie, it was just a…"

The intruder was cut short by the thunderous roar of twin thirty-inch tubes of British steel erupting in unison. Frankie was knocked flat on her ass by the concussive blast, and temporarily blinded and deafened as well. When the ringing stopped and she could blink the bright orange muzzle flash out of her eyes, she saw the dead man lying on the floor. His chest had been chewed to a pulp by a barrage of tiny lead pellets. Blood pooled around him. She looked at the majestic side-by-side shotgun lying on the floor, then went over to see the face of the man who had royally ruined her Halloween. She stared into the pale, grimacing, lifeless face of Goofball John Magee.

Later that night…

The police ruled the shooting an act of Self Defense, Frankie's story being corroborated by Mac, and by the time the Imaginary Friends returned from their party, the cops, the coroner, and a large section of carpeting had left the house.

"Dearie, are you alright?" Madame Foster wasn't sure how her granddaughter would feel after having killed somebody.

Frankie gave her grandmother a hug, "Yeah, I'm fine. I just wish I hadn't fired both barrels at once. My shoulder is really going to be sore tomorrow."

THE END


End file.
